Gabriel Loppé (1825–1913) was a French painter, mountaineer and pioneer of Alpine landscape painting. Widely recognised as the first artist to depict what the French call la haute montagne through direct observation, he founded the peintre-alpiniste tradition, bringing together artistic practice and mountaineering in a way that had never been seen before.
Living with remarkable independence of spirit, Loppé divided his life between the Chamonix valleys, Paris, Geneva, London and Zermatt. He came of age as mountaineering emerged as an established pursuit in the 1860s and en plein air painting transformed artistic practice. Advances in transport and engineering made possible an extraordinary life spent between Alpine summits and Europe's cultural centres, allowing him to paint the high mountains with a directness and authenticity that redefined Alpine landscape painting.
William Mitchell's Gabriel Loppé: Peintre-Alpiniste (2018) is the first book in English dedicated to the life and work of Gabriel Loppé, featuring over 100 colour illustrations and many hitherto unpublished works.